Abstract
In this essay, I argue that the Commodification Objection (suitably redescribed), locates a phenomenon of real moral significance. In defending the Commodification Objection, I review three common criticisms of it, which claim firstly, that commodification doesn’t always lead to instrumentalization; secondly, that commodification isn’t the only route to such an outcome; and finally, that the Commodification Objection applies only to persons, and human organs (and, therefore, blood products) are not persons. In response, I conclude that (i) moral significance does not require that an undesirable outcome be a necessary consequence of the phenomenon under examination; (ii) the relative likelihood of an undesirable mode of regard arising provides a morally-relevant distinguishing marker for assessing the comparative moral status of social institutions and arrangements; and (iii) sales in blood products (and human organs more generally) are sufficiently distinct from sales of everyday artefacts and sufficiently close to personhood to provide genuine grounds for concern. Accordingly, criticisms of the Commodification Objection do not provide grounds for rejecting the claim that human organ sales in general and compensation for blood plasma donation in particular can have morally pernicious ‘commodificatory effects’ upon our attitudes, for what human organ sales provide is a distinctive ethical hazard.
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Notes
There is a vast literature exploring these issues. See, for instance, Danovitch and Leictiman (2006).
See Wilkinson (2003) who focuses primarily on this particular objection.
Contemporary moral debates over sales of blood in the English-speaking world begin with Titmuss (1970). There exists a remarkably large philosophical and social science literature on Titmuss and, more generally, on the sale of human organs.
See also Wilkinson (2000). Here Wilkinson is primarily concerned with those anti-commodification arguments that focus on a loss of intrinsic value.
Herein I shall treat ‘commercialization’ and ‘commodification’ as synonyms.
This is exactly the line that Wilkinson runs in Bodies for Sale (2003).
These compossibility cases are explored in far greater detail in Adrian Walsh (2001).
Simmel claims in the Philosophy of Money that value arises only through such comparisons—it is price which gives rise to value. See Simmel (1991, pp. 92–93).
Hill explicates the undesirability of equivalence in terms of instrumental regard. See Hill (1992, p. 247).
Nor would logically possible, but physically impossible, counter-examples disprove the Corrosion Thesis.
We should also note this anti-empirical tone sits oddly with the direction of his own book which suggests that we should not think of commodification as wrong in itself, but simply for the consequential effects it has with respect to exploitation. This, however, is an empirical matter itself and presumably outside of the philosopher’s purview.
Frey also notes the existence of “Crowding-In Effects” where marketization fosters intrinsic valuation.
The standard form of the argument is as follows: (1) A makes criticism P; (2) A is guilty of P; (3) Therefore, P is dismissed.
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Walsh, A. Compensation for Blood Plasma Donation as a Distinctive Ethical Hazard: Reformulating the Commodification Objection. HEC Forum 27, 401–416 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10730-015-9287-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10730-015-9287-3